What Money Couldn't Buy
by DerangedCatGirl
Summary: And so the voices of the Host Club are heard once more, twenty years after graduation... or at least, not just their voices, but their childrens' too. Small collection of one-shots.
1. Chapter 1

WHAT MONEY COULDN'T BUY

Chapter 1 – _Temporary Insanity_

It was the fourth time that week that Haruhi found herself talking to a closed door. Her daughter's, to be precise.

"Kotoko," she sighed, tapping gently on the door, "open up, please."

"No!" Came the muffled reply from within. Something made a loud thump. Probably the person-sized teddy Tamaki had bought her last week for her fifteenth birthday.

"You're not in trouble," said Haruhi, repressing another sigh as she pushed her hand through her short hair – hair that had remained that length and style since she was sixteen. Every glance in the mirror made her smile. "I just want to talk to you."

"I don't want to talk!"

"Well I do. I'm coming in." Haruhi twisted the knob, rather relieved to find that Kotoko hadn't locked the door like she had three days ago. If there was one worry, it was that her unruly teenage daughter would do something she couldn't stop her from doing. Haruhi paused with her hands on her hips, wondering what to say.

Kotoko was stretched out face down on her bed, her blond hair fanned out around her, contrasting sharply with the deep red of her duvet cover. It, and her fair hair, was the only spot of colour in her daughter's bedroom. The rest was black. The curtains, the table cover, the pens and pencil case...Haruhi sighed. The carpet even...

She was never really sure where her daughter's attraction to such darkness came from, but suffice to say, Kotoko had stricken up a firm – though rather temperamental – friendship with Nekozawa's son, Hideaki, the moment they met four years ago. Even the person-sized teddy was actually a custom-made Beezlenef doll that Kotoko had begged from Tamaki. Haruhi sweat-dropped. Even twenty years after their marriage, she had to wonder at the happy-go-lucky generosity of the rich. The doll was actually quite intimidatingat times.

"Kotoko," she said gently, sitting down on the edge of the bed, and putting a hand on her daughter's head. "Tell me what's wrong. Why are you crying?"

"No," sniffled Kotoko. "And I'm not crying."

"Did you have another fight with Hideaki-kun?"

"No...yes..."

"Well?" Haruhi didn't press her daughter. Being fifteen was a tricky business, though she'd never really experienced it herself. She sweat-dropped again. Being sixteen had been far trickier, what with the Host Club and all.

"I...he..." Kotoko dragged herself up and looked disconsolately at her mother. "He – he _kissed_ me!"

Haruhi blinked, stumped for a moment. "He – kissed you?" she repeated – a little too loudly, it seemed, for the door burst open and her husband came catapulting into the room.

"_Who_ kissed my little princess aside from her daddy's pure lips?!" he cried, only prevented from smothering his only daughter with his hug by Haruhi's practised hand as she held him at bay.

"Go away dad!" yelled Kotoko, hurling her Beezlenef at him with such force that he cannoned back out of the door again.

Haruhi sighed as the door snapped shut. He'd be sulking and eating commoner's ramen for at least another two hours now. She'd sort him out later.

"Well," she said calmly, as though nothing had happened. "Do you want to tell me what happened?"

"He kissed me," said Kotoko, sniffling again, "and so I hit him."

Haruhi hid a smile. "You know, you really are like your daddy sometimes. You might have my eyes, but you've definitely got your dad's occasional lack of level-headedness."

"You mean stupidity," muttered Kotoko.

"Some call it that," said Haruhi, smiling. "But maybe that's why I married him."

"Okaasan," said Kotoko after a minute, "why did you marry papa?"

"Eh?" Haruhi paused, and looked at her daughter. "Why do you ask that?"

"Because of what you just said. You and papa are so different. Me and Hideaki are really similar but we're always fighting. And then I realised that our fighting might have meant something different to him, because he kissed me. But you and papa never fight, do you, even though you're so unlike each other?"

"I wouldn't say that," said Haruhi, smiling her brilliant smile, and chuckling a little bit as she thought back to the old Host Club days. "Well, it's more that your father never let me fight with him. I married him because I saw that, even though it took me four long years and several quite dramatic events to see it..." Kotoko, looking at her mother, suddenly saw a rare softness enter her face. "Your father loved me more than anybody else in the whole world, bar no one." Haruhi, still smiling, patted her daughter's head. "So you don't have to be afraid, Koko-chan, OK? I named you after a very clever, very pretty woman, and you've turned out just like her."

"That was obasan, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Haruhi got up. "Love isn't anything to be afraid of. It might make you feel like you're going mad, or someone else is going mad, but don't be afraid. Talk to Hideaki-kun."

Haruhi went out of the door, sighing slightly as she shut it, though she smiled. Hitting fifteen had been difficult for every one of their kids, and she'd had to deal with them differently. For example, their oldest, Tetsuya, had turned so wild and rebellious he wouldn't even listen to his mother any more - but all it had taken was to tell him that she was an honoured guest at the Haninozuka Dojo and that she'd spent most of her teenage years dressed as a boy and falling off bridges to gain his respect again. He was now in university studying Law.

Kotoko, despite her teenage obsession with darkness, was just a girl at heart, and loved her parents too much to not communicate with them, which is what often happened at her age. Haruhi supposed she had Tamaki to thank for that. She wasn't overly-affectionate with their kids, but Tamaki, true to form, spoilt them rotten. They balanced each other out.

It took her a few minutes to find her husband. He was, as she expected, in the smallest larder they had (about the size of her bedroom in her old house), poking disconsolately at a crop of mushrooms.

"Tamaki," said Haruhi, laying a hand on his shoulder. Even after all these years, it was hard not to tag 'senpai' on the end. "She doesn't hate you. She's just being a teenager."

"Somebody else kissed my beautiful princess!" wailed Tamaki, leaping up and embracing his wife. "Only daddy is allowed to!"

"That's what you said about me," said Haruhi, rolling her eyes and fending him off. "And besides, you weren't like this with our boys."

"Yes, but...but..." Tamaki looked, teary-eyed, at Haruhi, and for a moment this tall, handsome, forty-something-year old man looked just as he did at eighteen. He really was adorably ridiculous – Haruhi was secretly glad this aspect of him never disappeared. "But she's my daughter!"

"Funnily enough, so was I," said Haruhi sensibly, leading him out the closet. "Now please, it took me forever to clean out the mushrooms last week. Try growing them in the garden, hmmm?"

"She's not angry?" repeated Tamaki, pouting.

"No," said Haruhi calmly, "it's just temporary insanity."

"What'll it take to cure it?" called Tamaki, running after his wife who, as always, was thinking of more important things than his unreasonable tantrums. "Another Beezlenef?"

"No," she said cheerfully. "Though it'll take a few years, it'll be the same cure as for me. Marriage."

There was silence. And then,

"_WHAAAAT?!"_

Haruhi knew the mushroom-growing this time wouldn't stop for a week.

-End-

**I'm not quite sure where I was going with this one, but I hope you enjoyed it! In my opinion nothing about Tamaki would change, even twenty years on, including his protectiveness of his daughter – his real daughter in this case, instead of Haruhi. **

**In this collection of one-shots I want to give a nostalgic spin on the lives of the Host Club, because I, like so many of us, love them dearly and want to give them happy endings :P**

**Just a few notes: Okaasan is 'mum' in Japanese, and obasan is 'grandma'. Kotoko is Haruhi's mum's name I believe, though I could've got that wrong – and naturally Haruhi would've called her first daughter after her. At least I think so :D**

**Please R&R!**


	2. Chapter 2

WHAT MONEY COULDN'T BUY

Chapter 2 – _Nonsense  
_

Kyouya was working. Nothing new. Ever since his father had died, that was all he had been doing, but quite honestly, he enjoyed it. It helped him to stop thinking so much about things he didn't understand. And, of course, what he didn't understand first-off wasn't worth understanding at all. In truth, Kyouya just didn't like what he didn't understand. It distressed him somewhat.

On one particular day his office was quiet was usual, filled with the quiet ticking of the clock on his desk, and the unceasing scratching of his pen, but his thoughts ran amok...

..._**a homogeneous object, the mass divided by the volume gives the density. The mass is normally measured with an appropriate scale or balance; the volume may be measured directly (from the geometry of the object) or by the displacement of a fluid. Results for Graph A are predictable...**_

Predictable.

Everybody thought that Kyouya Ootori would marry Haruhi Fujioka. They had, after all, attended the same university, and had shared a seemingly close – albeit unusual – friendship since their late teens. But Kyouya had always known, right from the start, that if there was one thing in the world he couldn't do, it was denying Tamaki something that he wanted.

_**...The density of a solid material can be ambiguous, depending on exactly how its volume is defined, and this may cause confusion in measurement. A common example is...**_

A common example is Tamaki Suou, Kyouya thought absently, tapping out a calculation on his calculator (state-of-the-art, naturally). Tamaki was possibly the densest person he had ever met in his life, but also the most well-meaning – and a combination of the two traits made for the stupidest, most idiotic and incurably likeable men that ever walked the earth. Their first acquaintanceship had been wrought with a tearing struggle (on his part) between utter despair, annoyance, and a hunger to just tell him exactly what he thought. And, in the end, that baka was the one who put the despair and annoyance aside, and offered him the first true friendship Kyouya had ever known.

That was why he couldn't deny Tamaki this girl.

_**...for the direct measurement of the density of a liquid is the hydrometer, which measures the volume displaced by an object of known mass. A common laboratory device for measuring fluid density is a pycnometer; a related device for measuring the absolute density of a solid is a gas pycnometer. Though one cannot be so arrogant as to presume that a and b will bond to produce the expected results...**_

Kyouya preferred not thinking about things like this because he didn't understand how everything had happened the way it had. Well, some bits were obvious. Of course he knew that Haruhi, with her damnably good person-reading skills, would shoot to the top place in her Law school. Of course he knew that she and Tamaki were going to get married. He thought about his fellow Host Club alumni, and smiled in satisfaction as he realised his predictions for every single one of them had come true.

Every single one – if he didn't count himself. But he didn't think about that. It made him bewildered. He wasn't used to being bewiledered.

Kyouya put down his pen and stretched, closing his eyes. According to his calculations, it was nineteen years, forty-three weeks and four days since his year had graduated. In that time he had come far, at least politically and financially, and he had marked and could repeat every single step of the way that he had taken – because of course, he knew what was going to happen. Kyouya knew he wasn't the world's prodigious genius, but he also knew he was pretty damn close.

A gentle jingle caught his attention – a new email. Double-clicking, he snorted.

_Love makes the world go round!_ said part of Tamaki's excited email.

"No it doesn't," he murmured. "Gravity does, and an utter lack of friction in space, though the moon does contribute to that in some respects."

He turned back to his work.

_**...unless, of course, talking about metamorphosis. Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's form or structure through cell growth and differentiation. Some may refer to emotion-based metamorphosis, though that does not have any bearing on this particular topic...**_

What caused Kyouya the greatest distress these days was how much nonsense was coming into his life. He liked his life ordered, and predictable – at least, he liked to predict everything, not _be_ predictable. That would be terrible from a business point of view. This laxness about work, for example. Since when had he allowed reminiscing – and _fond_ reminiscing to boot – been allowed to interrupt his work?

A knock on the door disturbed his thoughts – and before he could even say "Come in," the door burst open anyway and a small girl of about five years flew in, chestnut-brown hair streaming behind her.

"Look what mummy showed me!" she crowed, not paying any attention to Kyouya's exasperated sigh.

"Aoi-chan, now isn't –"

"But look, look! It's _you_!"

Kyouya sighed and picked up the floppy, faded magazine to take a quick look, just for his daughter's sake. In the meantime he diagnosed this as another piece of 'nonsense'. No acquaintance of bygone days would ever have accused him of such a display of kindness and consideration... He choked as he saw the title.

_MOE MOE OURAN JOURNAL! HOT OFF THE PRESS! KASANODA-KUN CONFESSES TO HARUHI-KUN – and is REJECTED! BUT WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DISPLAY OF FRIENDSHIP! ONE HUNDRED MOE POINTS!_

Kyouya stared, speechless, at the photograph that Renge had somehow taken of most of the Host Club as they showered Kasanoda-kun with hugs (he was now, incidentally, the very powerful and respected yakuza boss of Okinawa prefecture), and the rabid, moe-stricken fan girls that dominated the rest of the clubroom.

Memories hit Kyouya head-on like a tonne of bricks, and at the same time, a realisation: the 'nonsense' had started creeping into his life the moment he and Tamaki formed the Host Club.

And suddenly, very suddenly, he began to laugh.

When Renge passed by Kyouya's office, knowing their daughter would have gone straight to her beloved daddy, she wondered who it was who laughed so freely. Pushing the door open, she stopped.

"Kyouya? Aoi-chan, I thought I told you..."

Kyouya fought to control himself and eventually stopped, shocked at himself, and looked at his wife, standing in the doorway. Part of the reason he had been laughing was because no one would ever suspect that the lady now gently scolding – yes, Renge was doing something gently – their daughter, was the teenage girl who had once followed him on a whim from France, was an official heart-throb otaku, and produced something as soppy as the – what was it? – _Moe Moe Ouran Journal_? Nor would they suspect, if they had seen her teenage otaku self, that she would have grown taller, quieter, more intelligent, and so beautiful with it. And never, _ever_ would said person have thought that Kyouya would be sitting here, twenty years later, looking at his five-year-old daughter without calculating who he could marry her off to.

All Tamaki's fault, in an indirect sort of way.

Kyouya glanced at his wife and daughter, at the Host Club journal in his lap, and finally at his work – and sighed when he realised that he cared for them in that order exactly. Maybe he should just give up trying to figure out this 'nonsense'.

"Renge," he said, getting up and smiling slightly. "Aoi-chan. Let's go out for dinner."

Before he left, he typed an answer to Tamaki's email.

_Love doesn't make the world go round, baka. But it certainly makes life worth the ride. Oh, and congratulations on the birth of your third son. Renge's expecting too._

_All the best, _

_Kyouya_

-End-

**Apologies for the scientific psycho-babble in between things. They were sort of specific to what Kyouya was thinking, though it was hard to work that in :P **

**And actually, I don't much like KyoRen pairings, just thought I'd give it a shot.**

**Mori's one-shot up next ;)**

**R&R please? ******


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